"What made you bring with you so useless a weapon?" he exclaimed. "It was needlessly hampering yourself."
"I bring it?—it is quite new to me. I never saw it before—are you sure it is not out of your collection?"
"Not that I know of," said the Professor, puzzled. "I have no recollection of the circumstance. It was never my property."
"This is very extraordinary," I said, musing over the novel and singular incident.
"Not at all. There is a very simple explanation, Harry. The Icelanders are known to keep up the use of these antiquated weapons, and this must have belonged to Hans, who has let it fall without knowing it."
I shook my head. That dagger had never been in the possession of the pacific and taciturn Hans. I knew him and his habits too well. "What can it be—unless it be the weapon of some antediluvian warrior," I continued, "of some living man, a contemporary of that mighty shepherd from whom we have just escaped? But no—mystery upon mystery—this is no weapon of the stone epoch, nor even of the bronze period. It is made of excellent steel———"
Ere I could finish my sentence, my uncle stopped me short from entering upon a whole train of theories, and spoke in his most cold and decided tone of voice. "Calm yourself, my dear boy, and endeavor to use your reason. This weapon, upon which we have fallen so unexpectedly, is a true dague, one of those worn by gentlemen in their belts during the sixteenth century. Its use was to give the coup de grâce, the final blow, to the foe who would not surrender. It is clearly of Spanish workmanship. It belongs neither to you, nor to me, nor the eiderdown hunter, nor to any of the living beings who may still exist so marvelously in the interior of the earth."
"What can you mean, uncle?" I said, now lost in a host of surmises.
"Look closely at it," he continued; "these jagged edges were never made by the resistance of human blood and bone. The blade is covered with a regular coating of iron-mould and rust, which is not a day old, not a year old not a century old, but much more———"
The Professor began to get quite excited, according to
